"They rushed again. Eight more cartridges gone. Twenty-one left. They
rush in this manner--at first the circle, rapid beyond expression, one
figure succeeding the other so swiftly that the dizzied vision loses
count and instead of seven of them there appear to be seventy. Then
suddenly, on some indistinguishable signal, they contract this circle,
and through the jets of powder-smoke Idaho and I see them whirling past
our rifle-sights not one hundred yards away. Then their fire suddenly
slackens, the smoke drifts by, and we see them in the distance again,
moving about us at a slow canter. Then the blessed breathing-spell,
while we peer out to know if we have killed or not, and count our
cartridges. We have laid the twenty-one loaded shells that remain in a
row between us, and after our first glance outward to see if any of them
are down, our next is inward at that ever-shrinking line of brass and
lead. We do not talk much. This is the end. We know it now. All of a
sudden the conviction that I am to die here has hardened within me. It
is, all at once, absurd that I should ever have supposed that I was to
reach La Paz, take the east-bound train and report at San Antonio. It
seems to me that I _knew_, weeks ago, that our trip was to end thus. I
knew it--somehow--in Sonora, while we were waiting orders, and I tell
myself that if I had only stopped to really think of it I could have
foreseen today's bloody business.
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